Voiceless
by Sobekneferu
Summary: An Imperial Fist under a vow of silence and a Space Wolf who cannot speak find themselves thrown together. Contains YAOI - don't like, don't read. Rated M for mature situations.


**Voiceless**

**Note:** This was written for the incomparable **1conceivable**, whose enthusiasm and kindness wished it into being. If you don't like consenting male Space Marines enjoying each other's company, please don't read or flame! Tychaeus and Ljotr are my own inventions, but Space Marines and all things related to Warhammer 40,000 belong to Games Workshop.

**Note 2:** In Ian Watson's Inquisition War trilogy, it is shown that Imperial Fists have a quirk of scrimshawing their own living bones with the names of fallen brothers. This has never been mentioned in current canon (the trilogy was written back in 2nd Edition), but I love the idea enough to resurrect it.

The chapel was not what I would have expected from a captain of the First Company in any other Chapter, but it was everything I expected of Lysander. Plain to the point of austerity, the only extravagance was a two meter viewing portal above a carving of Dorn at the Siege of Terra. It looked out into the void of space where not even a single star could be seen. Something about the relentless blackness both chilled and soothed my soul, and so intent was I on fathoming it that I failed to hear the Captain until his sun-bright Terminator armor hulked beside me.

"After so many centuries in the warp, I find it a comfort to be able to see nothing at all," he said, and I turned, startled, to bow as deeply as my Tactical armor would allow.

"No, no, Battle Brother Tychaeus, please, stand." Lysander gripped my forearm briefly in a warrior's greeting.

I nodded, and waited for him to continue.

"Chapter Master Vladimir has asked me to undertake a diplomatic mission to The Fang," he said without further preamble. He turned away from me to look out the portal once more, his movements crisp, and I was struck with pride at being in the presence of such a living legend. "The Iron Warriors have been sighted near territory that the Space Wolves have always considered their own."

Lysander glanced briefly at me, and I schooled my face into impassivity despite the burning hatred I felt at hearing the name of the heretic Marines. I could see by the slight smile on Lysander's lips that I had not entirely succeeded, but he continued.

"Our chapter master doesn't want the Wolves to interfere in our business," he explained. "So I – we, in fact – are going to The Fang to ask them to stay out of our fight."

This time I could not keep the shock from my features, and Lysander turned to face me again.

"Tychaeus, I asked for you as my escort personally." He gripped my pauldrons with his immense gauntlets and stared into my eyes. The oath paper covering the black fist of our Chapter crinkled and rustled under his hand. "First, because I can't be seen without an escort due to my rank, but to take anyone from my First Company would be viewed as unbearably aggressive." He waited for my nod of understanding before continuing. "And second, because of your oath. The Wolves are known to be… Well, barbaric is the kindest thing I've heard said about them. _You_ I can trust to not rise to their baiting."

Pain crushed my heart, and I welcomed it as Dorn's cleansing fire. I refused to lower my gaze, and Lysander inclined his head. "Yes. You and I, I think, have much in common. Feel free to use my chapel whenever you would like. We will arrive at Fenris within the week, Primarch willing." He turned on his heel and left, still moving with the precision that only centuries wearing Terminator armor could allow.

Once he had left the room I fell to my knees as though the strings holding me upright had been cut. With one hand I smoothed my oath paper, shaping the words with my lips without looking at it. How could I not know them word for word, after a century and a half?

_I, Tychaeus, Imperial Fist of the Fourth Company, do make my oath now before Chapter Master and Emperor. A vow of silence, for the rest of my days, until finally I fall in service to Chapter and Imperium. For the Imperial Fists at Ellyrion V, who no longer have voices of their own. For Dorn, whom I pray can forgive me for not falling in battle with my brothers…_

This time, though, not the blackness of space nor the words of my oath could bring peace to my suddenly troubled hearts.

_ 9 days later, at The Fang on Fenris_

I walked through the craggy halls of The Fang at Lysander's heels, and tried not to wince as I caught sight of my reflection in a crevice filled with ice. I would never question Captain Lysander, but I was the precise opposite of the rough and wild Space Marines who rough-housed and jostled around their own captain. I could hardly tell them apart, in their pale grey armor and wild braids and beards. Imperial Fists grow little hair, if any, and I was completely hairless except for the thin dark eyebrows that gave my ascetic face and smoked amber eyes the look of a poet more than a warrior. They hardly seemed impressed by us – or by the golden armor that Lysander and I wore which stood out like twin suns amidst the muted tones the Space Wolves affected. The only points of brightness were the monofilament blades they continued to brandish in their temperamental outbursts with one another, and the flame-colored hair and beards of many of the younger Wolves. They all had fetishes and charms of bone and wood and ceramite tied into their hair, and strung across their pauldrons, and dangling from their bolters. It looked like a den more than a fortress, and I felt more and more out of place with every step we took.

Our destination, we had been told, was one of their meeting halls, and I had expected something more like those aboard _Phalanx_ – clean, quiet places of gathering in service to Dorn and the Emperor. Instead the serf we were following guided us into the midst of a raucous feast. Space Wolves, some in armor and some in robes or stripped to the waist and greased with some sort of fat, were wrestling, shouting, tearing meat from giant spits, and quarreling with each other at the top of their lungs. It was like a blow to the face, and I hesitated at the entrance just long enough to become separated from Lysander and drawn into the melee.

Unwilling to fight my way back to him I pressed my back against the rock wall of the room and tried to give the impression of having planned to hold the exit all along. Soon his golden Tactical Dreadnought armor was almost hidden by the jousting Wolves, and it didn't take long before a cadre of them surrounded me.

"Oh look!" said one, his mouth full of barely-cooked animal flesh. "One of Dorn's prissy babies decided to leave the safety of his fortress!"

"Why don't you go back behind your walls where you belong and leave the fighting to _real _Space Marines?"

"What's the matter, wolf got your tongue?"

I could feel my breathing quicken and it took everything I had to not reach for my bolter and show them what a real Space Marine did when confronted with undisciplined rabble. I bit my own tongue hard enough to taste blood, and pain briefly dominated my desire to strike out at them.

More Space Wolves joined their comrades, and they pulled me into their midst. "Looks like he thinks he's too good for us, what do you say, Erik?"

The one named Erik, a Wolf with shoulders nearly twice the breadth of my own, grinned with malice. "I think maybe we should see what he's made of, Alfrith."

I looked desperately to where Lysander had disappeared, but he was nowhere to be seen. I tried to tap my oath paper to explain to the Wolves, but they only laughed.

"Wolves don't read, prissy-Fist. Reading is for heretics and sorcerers. Come on, we're taking you hunting."

They dragged me from the room by sheer force of numbers before I could even think to struggle, and pulled me down interminable walkways until we came to an immense cavern. Flickering torches and occasional lumen-sticks revealed haphazard rows of bikes and landspeeders interspersed with quarreling Wolves and human serfs.

"Pick yourself a bike, we're going for a ride," said Erik. He started to laugh, but it was cut short when another Space Wolf approached us. In fact, the entire mob went completely silent, which so startled me that I didn't even try to break free of their hands. Instead I looked up to see who had managed to silence them.

He was my height, but broad-shouldered and muscled like all the Space Wolves, and his black hair was twined with just as many bones and runes as his comrades'. But it was fine and clean and silken, cascading down his Tactical armor in slithering braids that reached almost to his waist. He had no beard, and as he approached I saw why. A trio of ridged white scars rippled across his face from right to left, neatly framing his pale blue eyes and then continuing crosswise down his throat to disappear beneath his armor. No hair could grow where that fearsome wound had been dealt. The ceramite itself had clearly been mended because there were three silver streaks hammered into the gorget and chest plate. I swallowed a mouthful of blood and willed my hearts to stop hammering.

For his part, he simply stopped and stared at me, and then slowly surveyed the Space Wolves surrounding me. One gauntleted finger tapped at the plasma pistol holstered at his waist, and Erik turned a brighter red than his hair.

"Captain Ljotr," he began, but the raven-haired Wolf shook his head. He pointed at another Wolf whose name I had not heard, then pointed at me and raised one bisected black eyebrow.

The other Wolf flinched. "We were just taking him hunting, Captain," he said, an audible whine tainting his voice.

Ljotr pushed his way through his battle brothers to stand directly in front of me. I quelled my harsh breathing and stared directly into his icy gaze. He glanced at my uncovered pauldron, where my name was etched in black upon an ivory scroll.

_Space Wolves don't read,_ I thought, but he traced the letters slowly with his right index finger and I saw his lips form them. T-Y-C-H-A-E-U-S, he spelled silently, and it was then that the thunderbolt hit. I grabbed his wrist, heedless of the gasps of the Space Wolves who now surrounded both of us. His eyes narrowed and he reached for his pistol, but I blocked him with my left arm and then released his wrist to point to his throat. Anger flushed his pale skin – so pale compared to his battle brothers – but I persisted. One golden finger brushed the scar there, and I had to quash the sudden stab of desire to touch it with my bare hand. Instead, I touched it again, as gently as a feather, and then pointed to the oath paper covering my chapter markings. Then I touched my own throat.

Understanding cleansed the anger from his expression, and he nodded. No fool, he. My oath paper rustled as he touched it in return, the Wolves around us as silent as we. His eyes were fixed on mine, and this time it was I who flushed, filled with a feeling I could put no name to. Then the Space Wolf captain turned back to his waiting battle brothers. His fingers flashed in some secret battle cant, and the mob of barbarians rushed to start readying bikes their bikes. I could hear them murmuring to themselves about the honor of Captain Ljotr joining their hunt, and I was more confused than ever.

Ljotr made a commanding gesture, and Erik, who had lingered to watch us, shoved me in the back. "You're riding with him, prissy-Fist. Don't know why he'd waste his time with an outsider," he hissed maliciously. I gave him my best stone-faced glare, but the effect was somewhat spoiled by having to trot to catch up with Captain Ljotr who was already adjusting his harness in a stone-grey landspeeder.

I opened my mouth, and then shut it again, and climbed in next to him. I was no expert in the counter-grav vehicles, but I had received training like any Imperial Fist, and I took the gunner's spot with a sense of foreboding. As soon as I was seated he released the throttle, and with a brilliant grin he led the hunting pack of Space Wolves roaring out of the cavern.

We sped across the snow and ice of Fenris. I had no idea what we were hunting for, but after the first few minutes I allowed myself to be as exhilarated as Ljotr seemed to be. His eyes narrowed against the glare, he looked completely in his element, and for the first time I realized why the Emperor on His Throne permitted the Space Wolves to share in his grace. _We are his bulwarks,_ I thought, _but if someone were to try and hide from His wrath, I have no doubt that the Space Wolves would find them._ I relaxed into the ride, pleased with the company at last, and more pleased to see that Ljotr's landspeeder was far outpacing the bikes of his subordinates.

My last thought as a roaring wall of white suddenly appeared in front of us was _where did THAT come from?_ Then all went black.

I awoke to agonizing pain in my right leg. I bit my tongue, a reflex from when I had first made my vow so long ago, and opened my eyes one at a time. I was in a cave.

_Not good, _I thought. _Was that some kind of snow Leviathan? Am I being eaten?_ I risked a glance down, and realized I was no longer in my armor. Ljotr was bent over my right leg doing something that made it hurt even more before my body finally caught up with it and released pain-numbing agents into my bloodstream. _Oh._ I thought. _Oh, thank Dorn. _I dared not ponder the depths of my relief at his survival, and instead as my mind cleared with the rush of painkillers I forced myself to continue taking stock of my situation.

I realized he was setting what had to be multiple fractures in my leg bones so they would heal properly. He looked up as I shifted slightly, and the naked relief on his own expression twisted a knife into my gut that even the painkillers couldn't dull. He looked back down, and, satisfied with his work, tied a final splint onto my leg. Then he pulled me over to the wall and up into a seated position before crouching next to me. He had removed his gauntlets and his hands were coated in crimson. My face must have given away my thoughts because he pointed to my leg and then wiped them carelessly on the furs tied to his armor.

I had to look away from him or I knew I would drown. I had never been so struck by another Space Marine. The effortless respect he commanded from his battle brothers could not be explained only by his rank; there was something in his demeanor that drew me like an astropath to the Emperor's Light. I had never once thought to consider another Marine handsome, but the claw marks across his face only served to enhance a fierce and uncompromising beauty.

_What's wrong with me,_ I wondered desperately. _Have I been bewitched? Is this a dream caused by drinking too much of the vile mead the Space Wolves are said to consume so much of?_

Ljotr touched my arm, and I startled so badly I nearly tipped myself over. I looked at him and he smiled, then pointed to a corner of the cave. I realized then that we were in some sort of way station or hunting lodge disguised as a cavern. There were hidden vents in the sides releasing a steady stream of heat, and I saw a blinking panel near a door. In the corner where Ljotr was pointing I saw my golden armor crumpled in a heap. The right greave was shattered completely, and there were dents and scratches all over it that I could see even from across the room. Ljotr pulled a stick of some hard grey substance from a pouch at his thigh and sketched on the wall next to me. He was no expert, but at last I understood.

We had been attacked by one of the immense semi-mythical beasts that roamed Fenris. I touched his drawing, and then touched my leg, and he nodded, then went over to another jumbled pile of gear and pulled out his plasma pistol and right gauntlet. The pale armor of the gauntlet was charred black, and the pistol itself had a cracked coil and was cold to the touch. I was awed that he had survived a plasma overheat, and let it show.

Ljotr smiled again, and then touched the drawing of the beast again. He mimed shooting it, and then shook his head and shrugged. Pointed to my leg, and mimed dragging me here. His eyebrows, interrupted as they were by the scars, were marvelously expressive, and I became mesmerized by their movement and by that of his mobile lips as they shaped words he could no longer speak.

He seemed to realize I was no longer properly attending, and shook his head. He pulled out from a chest the furred hide of some beast that surely must have been a cousin to the one which attacked us and draped it over me, and as I fell into blackness I saw him take my bolter and stalk out of the cavern.

Days passed, I think, although it was hard to be entirely certain without my armor's chronometer. Ljotr fed me, mostly meat (fresh, whose provenance I didn't care to know), and dried rations from the stores of the lodge. The pain in my leg was duller each time I woke, although I knew I'd need to see an Apothecary before I did any fighting on it.

One day I awoke to an immense crash. I startled out of my sleep to see Ljotr's face contorted with frustration and rage. He was out of his armor, kicking it with truly furious desperation. He turned to see my eyes open, and my breath caught to see him, thinner from our slender rations and incandescent with some nameless anger. His face contorted with what looked like shame, and he fled the cave before I could move.

I pulled myself slowly to my feet, and surveyed the damage. His Tactical Armor was in a heap next to mine, and as I pieced through it I realized that my bolter was back in my holster. The feed was empty of bullets, and I thought I knew what had caused Ljotr's mostly-silent outburst. We had no more ammunition of any kind, and the blinking light indicating a distress call on his armor still had not been answered.

I was stiff from lying on the ground, and filthy, and since Ljotr showed no sign of returning I decided to do something about both. I limped outside and stripped off the clothes I'd been wearing under my armor and scrubbed myself with snow until my skin was flushed with cold and exertion. All around me was an endless expanse of white. I left my clothes in a heap to deal with later, save for my torn pants which weren't worth saving, and limped back into the lodge hidden in the cave.

With an apology mouthed to Dorn for the desecration, I wrapped my tabard around my waist as a loincloth, and set to work putting our armor to rights. Each piece of first my armor, and then his, I polished with a piece of my former pants and set out in order on the ground. I was exhausted and sweating after the first hour, but I welcomed the pain as a gift from Dorn and let it purify me as I worked. There were golden shards of my armor scattered everywhere, and I gathered each one and piled them reverently near the hole in the leg where they had come from.

When at last I was done, I sat back down on the furs in the corner with Ljotr's plasma pistol. It was covered in runes and sigils that meant nothing to me, but I began to disassemble it nonetheless.

I was no Techmarine, but I am a son of Dorn, and we are builders right down to our geneseed. I did not even realize Ljotr had returned until a shadow fell over me, lit only by the faint blue glow I had coaxed back to life in the plasma coil. I held it up to him in both palms as an offering.

He was shirtless, too, as he knelt to take it from me, a look of wonder on his face, and one of his braids slipped over his shoulder. I touched it without thinking, felt the heaviness of it, the satiny sheen that meant he, too, had performed snowy ablutions today. He glanced around the room, looking everywhere but my face, and guilt suffused his expression.

I have never so much wanted to break my oath as then, when I saw him silently berating himself for mistreating our armor, for leaving me crippled and alone to do all the work of cleaning up after his loss of temper. _Never mind that!_ I wanted to shout. _You dragged me to safety, set my leg, fed us both, and I am not even close to worthy to sit this close to you._

My breath caught in my throat, and at that slight sound he turned back toward me. His pale wolf's eyes bored into my smoky amber ones. I was enthralled, ensorcelled, bespelled by his gaze, and I found myself helpless as he set down the plasma pistol with exaggerated care and crawled closer to me.

Still as a statue, I sat there, as he leaned in, his gaze now predatory and commanding. He brought his face to my chest, and breathed in the scent of me in a burning line up to the crook of my neck. His braids slid over my bare chest and his breath was hot below my ear. I wished suddenly to be back in my armor, to conceal the effect his erotic motions had on me, but I was only wearing a loincloth and he…he lifted his head and kissed me.

I was not ignorant of how people show affection – serfs in the _Phalanx_ courted and were married all the time. But oh, I had never been kissed, and oh, never by a thunderstorm like him. Ljotr devoured my lips, and when I parted them to gasp at this audacity he plundered my mouth with his tongue as well. I would have sworn before the Emperor that I was still frozen in shock, but somehow my arms became wrapped around his waist and I was lying down instead of sitting and oh, Primarch, he was as aroused as I was and I could feel every inch of him as he lay atop me panting and kissing me as though I would disappear into the Warp at any moment.

My hands slid along the heavy planes of his muscles, along his arms, and twined in his glorious raven braids that smelled of some herb I had never known I craved until now. And I was kissing him back, Emperor help me, learning from his kisses as he learned from mine until we were tangled together unbearably close and yet not close enough. Involuntarily I thrust up against him, and he threw back his head in shock and pleasure.

I bit my tongue so hard blood leaked from the corner of my mouth as I stared at him, undone by wanting something I never knew could be wanted. Duty, they teach us in the fortress-monasteries, duty and honor and love for our battle brothers and Primarch and the Emperor on his throne, but never a love like this, between a scarred Space Wolf and a silent Son of Dorn. Never this voiceless, nameless, unendurable love that tore me to pieces and made me into a better Space Marine simply by existing.

Ljotr tumbled to the side suddenly, and I bit back the moan that threatened to burst from my lips at the loss of his feverish heat, but it was only to claw at his leggings and boots and I realized that I, too, wanted nothing more than to feel more of his skin on mine. I untwisted my loincloth and he was back upon me in a heartbeat, ravaging my lips and touching me everywhere as though to assure himself I was real.

His arousal was thick and heavy against mine, and I could hardly bear the friction each time we bucked and thrust at each other. I reached blindly for the scented oil I had been using earlier on the plasma pistol, and he caught at my wrists and plucked it from me. He parted us briefly and I thought I would die from pleasure as he rubbed it along my length. I felt him stroke himself as well, and then suddenly he shifted positions and he was between my legs. His long black hair fell like a curtain around us, and our eyes were locked together as slowly he pushed himself into me.

Into me! Oh, Emperor! Oh, Dorn! Lysander, my Captain, should I not feel shame to be ravished by this Space Wolf? But I felt no shame, only a wild, delirious pleasure as he filled me, a look of mingled terror and adoration on his face. It was that expression that mastered my heart completely. He did not look like a predator then, or a stranger, but like a man who finds himself in possession of that which he has most longed for, and is suddenly afraid that possessing it will destroy it utterly. I waited until he had completely sheathed himself within me, and then I made the first movement. Just a tiny one, a little shifting of my hips, and then I reached up and pulled his lips to mine once more.

I felt his lips move against mine, and I realized he was trying to say my name. _Tychaeus_, his lips formed. _Tychaeus. Beloved._

_Ljotr,_ I shaped back with mine, and he gripped me even more tightly. _Ljotr, my Wolf, my love._

We could not speak, we could not even cry out as first he and then I reached our peaks of passion, but we could trace with our lips the shapes of our hearts and souls, and for me that was enough and I fell asleep in his arms completely at peace for the first time in two centuries.

When I woke he was still beside me, but sitting up and doing something with his hair with a look of extreme concentration. As I watched, he unbraided a long strand, and placed the three small runestones that had been caught in it to the side. Then he began to braid it again, but where each of the runes had hung before he was wiring a small golden shard from my armor.

I touched his thigh and he startled, then flushed deeply across his cheekbones leaving the white of his scars to stand out even more prominently. I ran my hand along the thick plane of his thigh, and I put my whole heart into the smile I gave him. He smiled too, then, and finished the braid before hesitantly bending down to kiss me.

How could I not kiss him back? What of myself could I deny my Wolf, when I knew all too well that my leg was nearly as healed as it could be without an Apothecary, and my duty to Chapter and Primarch required that we start marching back to The Fang soon if no one came to find us. I could no more break my oaths, any of them, than could Ljotr, but the least I could do was to pretend, for the short time left to us, that we two were all that mattered in the galaxy.

We made love again and again, through all that day and night. And in between, we made our devotions to each other – he with the shards of sun-bright ceramite filling his hair, and me with the flesh of my wrist peeled back as I so carefully etched his name and image into my living bones with the needles and ink from my belt pouch. I would have expected, perhaps, that my Wolf would be horrified by the art of the Imperial Fists, but he merely nodded and smiled, and when my fingers were not busy with either my art or his flesh he took one of his discarded runes and some wire and pierced my right ear with it. I touched it, wonderingly, and then we fell once more into the firestorm of our passion.

I might have wished for longer; Dorn knows how much I care for my honor, but oh, I would have asked for even one more night. One more day and one more night, of our tangled limbs and four hearts beating in one frenzied time with each other. The Emperor, I think, in His wisdom, knew that my soul would be too torn, but even so the rush of displacing air from a teleporter nearly ripped it asunder.

Ljotr stiffened, and then forced himself to stay beside me, his hand on my shoulder, as Lysander threw open the door to the lodge.

"By Dorn, Tychaeus, you've won me quite the bet with the Master of the Fang! I swore I could find my own man before those Wolves, and here I am." He trailed off, taking in my position on the ground next to Ljotr, nothing but a white pelt covering us from the waist down. "Well, perhaps I'll call it a draw," he continued, and I smiled at the Captain's scrupulous honesty. "Get your armor on, Tychaeus, and you too, Wolf. We've got a Crusade to be part of, and I'll be damned in the Emperor's eyes if I don't kill myself at least two cadres of those Iron bastards." He turned, bulky in his Terminator armor, and then looked back at the two of us. He shook his head, and a faint grin lurked around the corners of his scarred face. "Don't make me wait."

Ljotr and I rose as soon as the door closed, and kissed, desperately, greedily. I tangled my hands in his braids as I told him with lips and tongue how much I loved him. There was no doubt in me as to his love for me, even as we separated and donned our armor. What an Imperial Fist he would have been! And yet there was something in his demeanor that was so perfectly suited by his Chapter, that I could not imagine taking that from him.

Armored and armed, we exited the cave together, where Lysander stood waiting. He grasped one of each of our wrists, and with a snap of ozone we found ourselves back in the feasting hall at the Fang where first I had met my Wolf.

No time, no time for another goodbye, with Lysander already murmuring commands into the mic intake in his gorget, but quicker even than a Fenrisian Wolf Ljotr stole my bolter, and pushed his plasma pistol into my hands before the teleporter whisked Captain Lysander and me back to his waiting ship and our Crusade.

I did not reckon closely enough the cost of loving my Wolf, but I measure it now in every heartbeat, every breath that I take that is not in tandem with him. Though I am already promoted to Sergeant, and rumor has me on a fast track to Captain (which, I pray in secret, might one day place me as commander of a joint operation with another, beloved, Chapter), still my passion and love remain voiceless and silent, and in the dark of the night my unkissed lips still shape his name.

_My Wolf. My love. Ljotr._


End file.
